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Prosecutions up in war zones

As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wind down, the number of people indicted is rising. |
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Several U.S. government employees, who received kickbacks for steering contracts to local conspirators and providing inside information to people competing for contracts. A former army sergeant, who was not identified, is charged with pocketing more than $12,000 in cash that a contractor never picked up after the money was allegedly stolen by another army sergeant and mailed to California inside a stuffed animal.

Jordanian national and U.S. Embassy employee Osama Esam Saleem Ayesh, who was convicted in April for stealing nearly $240,000 intended to cover shipping and customs charges the State Department incurs when it moves household goods of its employees. The money wound up in Ayesh’s bank in Jordan.

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Money stolen from reconstruction projects also has been shipped off of U.S. battlefields tucked into letters home and stuffed in a military vest. Tens of thousands of dollars were once sewn into a Santa Claus suit.

Prosecutors have retrieved some of the money. More than $83 million will be returned to the U.S. from Iraq cases completed in the budget year that ended Sept. 30, bringing the total recovered over the last seven years to nearly $155 million, Bowen’s office said.

As well as stolen cash, the total includes court-ordered restitution, fines and proceeds from the sale of merchandise seized from those convicted, including Rolex watches, luxury cars, plasma TVs and houses.

Prosecutions by Trent’s office recovered $51 million over the past year, his report said.

But the amount recovered is believed to be a tiny fraction of what’s been stolen in the two war zones, a figure that will probably never be known for certain. Far more money is believed to have been lost through waste and abuse that resulted from poor management and the often-questioned U.S. strategy of trying to rebuild nations that are still at war.

The U.S. has committed $62 billion to rebuilding Iraq and $72 billion for the reconstruction of Afghanistan.

The independent Commission on Wartime Contracting estimated in August that at least $31 billion has been lost to waste and fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan, adding that the total could be as high as $60 billion. It studied not just reconstruction spending, but $206 billion for the logistical support of coalition forces and the performance of security functions.

The commission found that from 10 to 20 percent of the $206 billion in spending was wasted, while fraud accounted for the loss of another 5 to 9 percent.

Bowen called the cost of fraud “egregious.”

“This is open crime occurring in a war zone,” he said. “And the purpose of a lot of these expenditures is to win hearts and minds. Obviously we lose hearts and minds” when local populations see foreigners steal money meant to help rebuild their country.

The inspectors general are only two of the U.S. government offices looking into fraud, waste and abuse. Others include State Department inspectors and Army criminal investigators.

I can hear it now from all the teanut repubs crying about this, it's not fair to prosecute them. That's why the repubs had no accountable for 8 years, give no bid contracts to friends, billions unaccounted for in both wars, and loved the war profiteering. And now this is happen and the repubs do not want this to come to light, so the repubs will step in to kill it for their friends.

Senator Byrd warned that by voting for the war resolution in October 2002, Congress was giving Bush a blank check, with no end in sight. As bees gather around a honeypot, crooks gather around a moneypot. All this corruption was to be expected. Added to this is the fact that due to the unpopularity of all these unnecessary wars, military recruitment standards have had to be lowered.